Question Time 13th November 2025
The Panel:
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour)
Ken Clarke (Conservative)
Danny Kruger (Reform)
Zarah Sultana (Your Party)
Venue: London
This week’s Question Time panel sees an odd B team (many with financial links to the BBC) assembled to, perhaps, miss an opportunity to bash the scandal-hit broadcaster. Not least, Danny Kruger via his mother! Read on…
Born in Westminster, Daniel Rayne Kruger’s education included Eton College, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Oxford. As ever, the dullard of the family is dispatched to Question Time. The 51-year-old is the son of author and property developer Rayne Kruger and his wife, Dame Prudence — famous as restaurateur and cookery broadcaster Prue Leith.
Saffers, Mrs Kruger-Leith hails from Cape Town, and her late husband, Rayne, from the Eastern Cape. A respected and successful author, Rayne Kruger’s English home was Chastleton Glebe — a rambling stone house set within a 30-acre Gloucestershire garden, complete with a one-acre lake.
A long-standing BBC type, the Temp informs me Dame Prue’s work with the BBC includes Great British Menu, The Great British Bake Off, The Food Programme, Desert Island Discs, BBC News (reporting of her charitable work, such as opening a bakery in Witney), Cash in the Celebrity Attic and Blankety Blank. The 85-year-old is also featured on BBC Berkshire’s Facebook page.
Keeping it in the media bubble, Danny’s cousin Sam is the literary editor of The Spectator. Penny Junor, of the Daily Express and BBC’s The Travel Show is an in-law. Never having had a job, after Oxford, Danny drifted through a series of political non-positions before becoming the MP for Devizes in the 2019 general election. Having held the seat in the 2024 election, he defected to Reform UK two months later.
Ken Clarke, not his real name – The Right Honourable and Learned Kenneth Harry Clarke, Baron Clarke of West Bridgford in the County of Nottinghamshire CH, PC, KC – is sound on steam engines but nothing else. An unhinged Remainer, privately educated Kenneth (£21,000 per annum Nottingham High School) graduated in law from Cambridge’s Gonville and Caius College and was later called to the bar. Elected as Tory MP for Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire in 1970, the 85-year-old remained an MP until 2019. However, he sat as an independent for the last three months, having lost the whip (Brexitphobia).
Clarke made his money from Blue Chip directorships. Between 1998 and 2007 he was deputy chairman of British American Tobacco. No respecters of laws or borders, in 2005, litigation in the United States resulted in legal advice given to the company being made public. Documents showed that while Clarke was their deputy chair, BAT had been involved in a tobacco smuggling operation based on the Caribbean island of Aruba. Hundreds of millions of dollars a year flowed from there to the firm’s control centre in Switzerland.
BAT was increasing its market share in countries such as Colombia and Argentina by the illegal importing of cigarettes while avoiding paying duties. Briefing notes and advice given to Clarke by City lawyers, Lovells, showed that he was aware of the scam and therefore lied to an investigating House of Commons committee.
As a health minister between 1982 and 1985 and Health Secretary between 1988 and 1990, Clarke is also implicated in the Infected Blood scandal. His prevarication under questioning at the never-ending inquiry led to admonishment from chair Sir Brian Langstaff.
Another scandal revolves around allegations he groped a young man, Ben Fellowes, during a visit to the Commons. Mr Clarke was never charged but his alleged victim was. The jury disbelieved Clarke’s evidence and cleared Fellowes of perverting the course of justice.
Given the bad odour and his absence from front-line politics for several years, why has the BBC invited Clarke to debate the scandal-bedevilled corporation? Perhaps because he’s been on their payroll? Clarke hosted a long-running BBC programme, Ken Clarke’s Jazz Greats, with this and other “non-political media work” listed in his interests declarations as earnings in the range of “£10,001–15,000.”
A full G-P biography of Zarah can be found here, appropriately entitled Zarah Sultana. Avoid. The highlights include the 32-year-old grammar school girl never having had a job and being handed a safe Midlands seat by the then Islington Corbyn Labour leadership.
Her anti-semitic social media comments can be read of in the article, as can the tangle over her donations and relationship with the leader of the Fire Brigades Union and her undeclared support of the union in parliament. As previously mentioned, avoid. Having left the Labour Party and formed her own with Jeremy Corbyn, at the moment it consists of warring lefties with no policies, optimistically entitled ‘Your Party’.
On QT as recently as the 6th June, Alex Davies-Jones hails from *deep breath* Pentre’r Eglwys in the parish of Llantwit Fardre, which is in the Taff Ely district of Rhondda Cynon Taf, about four miles from Llantrisant. After graduating from Cardiff University with a degree in Law and Politics, Ms Davies-Jones has never had a job. Following her education, she has done nothing other than research in the House of Liars and Thieves and at the National Assembly for Wales.
Pointless communications and consultancy roles followed, as did council positions, before being parachuted into Parliament in the 2019 general election as the Labour MP for Pontypridd. With a BBC level of commitment to free speech, when questioned on the doorstep by two ‘local women’, Ayeshah Behit and Hiba Ahmed, during the 2024 election, Alex reported them to the police and had a district judge convict them of harassment.
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Ken Clarke’s making his 60th appearance on the programme, announced La Bruce at the top of the show. As if that’s a good thing. Interestingly, Zarah Sultana was headlined as being of the ‘radical’ left rather than of the ultra-hard far extreme left. Hmm.
Question one: Are the adults back in the room? Oh, not about the BBC after all but about London bubble briefing and counter-briefing regarding La Streeting mincing through the streets of Westminster on manoeuvres.
Alex, in a comedy Welsh voice, acknowledged that the infighting was a ‘thing’ (unlike the collapse of the BBC, which is being ignored). However, hope is on he way, Alex is ‘delivering’. Kruger thought Starmer decent and honourable, but they don’t believe in anything, and there isn’t a plan. The public is disappointed. There is a vacuum of leadership – a philosophical vacuum with a leader at the top who doesn’t believe in anything.
Alex lives in the real world, not in a bubble – despite never having had a job. So grounded in the real world that she expressed full confidence in Morgan McSweeney. When is something positive going to happen? asked a gentleman in the audience. It’s all doom and gloom. God helps them that helps themselves, sir.
Symptomatic of a deep crisis in our politics. This is personalities, not policies, began Kenneth Clarke. There’s never been a time when both Tory and Labour have been so unpopular. Serious parties of the centre ground have to convince people of their honesty, said the old dissembling crook.
Zarah Sultana took the hint and went full serious centre ground politician: Wes Streeting and Kier Starmer are like the Kray twins. Oh. She listed the shortcomings of the Labour government and, frankly, if anything, they sound a bit worse than the Krays – ‘genocide in Palestine’, no less. She ranted at the rich, at high speed and in a squeaky voice.
The conversation, via a contribution from the audience, drifted towards women as victims, particularly at the hands of immigrants. Alex blamed the locals. Kruger blamed the ECHR and Zarah said the real victims are the immigrants. Brand management dressed as militancy, said Alex, out of the blue. Clarke rambled about immigration. This is a most successful multicultural country. Obviously not Ken.
Question two. Can we trust the BBC? Got there eventually. Not at the moment, began Kruger. The bias is endemic. Well-meaning, decent people have corrupted our institutions because of the echo chamber progressive agenda present in such places.
Ken Clarke is a fan of the BBC, but the juggled clips altering evidence against The Donald on Panorama were very wrong. A loon in the audience wanted Donald Trump to be held accountable for being lied about by the BBC’s fake news.
Zarah thought the BBC is biased towards (((carefull now))), regarding the absence of words like ‘occupation’ and the non-reporting of the behaviour of Maccabi Tel Aviv football ‘hooligans’.
Having got away with it thanks to a largely BBC-dependent panel, La Bruce moved on.
Question three: better public services but no extra tax? Ken wanted public expenditure cuts and taxes raised, like Sir Geoffrey Howe in 1981. Mrs Reeves should put her tin hat on and get on with it. Welfare is out of control.
Tough, difficult times are improved through tough, difficult decisions. He then talked nonsense about the tail end of the first Thatcher administration. They did not win a second term on the economy but on the back of a miserable and split opposition led by Michael Foot.
Reform councils are putting up local taxes, pointed out La Bruce. Yes, but that’s not party policy, Kruger explained. He talked around the issue somewhat when all he had to say was that much of local authority spending is statutory (ie an obligation under the law) and those laws come from the London government.
Clarke called Reform councillors amateurs elected because the people have lost confidence in serious politicians. Hold on, if these people are ‘serious’ then how come …. Kruger put himself on firmer ground by informing Clarke that Reform’s councillors had been elected as the ‘serious’ parties had bankrupted local government. Zarah informed us that this is austerity, and it has killed 300,000 people and reduced life expectancy by half a year.
Honesty, barked a Scotsman in the audience. A lack of honesty regarding working people being promised no tax increases. And a huge tax on employment, of all things, at the last budget, chipped in Ken.
Zarah is going to tax the mega-rich. She summoned her inner Dianne Abbott. There are 20,000 of them. They have assets over £10,000,000 each and taxing them will raise a trillion billion. They won’t leave the country, as, rather than go to Monte Carlo, they want to stay here in the cold and rain and be taxed to death. ‘The magic money tree exists!’ The other politicians are funded by the trillionaires so won’t do anything.
Well, Puffins, despite being worth well less than £10 million, I found watching this tripe too taxing and emigrated to bed.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
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